That's a patently ludicrous line of thinking. In college football WE DON'T KNOW who the #1 and #2 teams are. You're basically complaining that it's unfair Alabama or Ohio State should have to actually prove they are in fact actually better than Washington and Clemson.
I don't know that that's the argument in a four-team playoff.
We're just supposed to assume? What if Washington beats Alabama and the Pac-12 goes 5-1 in their bowl games?
Then the Pac 12 is probably the best conference out there.
College football needs a playoff more than any sport, because unlike the pros most of these teams are fairly isolated by conference and never play each other. It's part of what makes the Playoff so awesome. We're getting dream match-ups we never would have gotten otherwise.
You're getting Ohio State beating the Big 12 champion BECAUSE of the four-team playoff.
Not really -- to this day we don't know what would have happened if LSU played Oklahoma State.
Actually, we do - LSU would have absolutely mauled them, and Les Miles would probably still have a job.
The fact that most people agree Alabama and LSU were the two best teams doesn't change the fact that the national title was decided in a rematch between two teams that had already played.
You mean like:
Super Bowl XVIII - Raiders beat Redskins after losing in regular season and beat Seattle in AFC Championship after losing to Seahawks TWICE in regular season
1985 NCAA basketball championship - Villanova wins title after losing TWICE to Georgetown in regular season
1988 NCAA basketball championship - Kansas wins title after losing TWICE to Oklahoma in regular season
Super Bowl XXV - NY Giants win NFC title AND Super Bowl against teams that beat them in the regular season
Super Bowl XXVIII - Cowboys beat Bills after losing during regular season (yeah, I know Emmitt didn't play)
Super Bowl XXXVI - Patriots beat Rams for title after losing in the regular season
The irony is that your position here is anti-rematch but any expansion of playoffs will DRASTICALLY increase the number of rematches.
So here's the thing -- in the World Series they used to just play the best record in the NL vs the best record in the AL.
Back when there were 16 teams and they were all clustered in the East except St Louis. Furthermore, the 1954 Yankees won 103 games and had won five straight World Series. But the Giants, who won fewer games, wiped the floor with the Indians. Or the 1990 Cincinnati Reds shocking the A's.
And you're right -- that method was better at producing the best team as champion because you didn't have some 83 win wild card team knocking of a team that won 100 games in a short series because of a hot pitcher.
Even this is a rarity. And at least in something like baseball, you have to win MANY games to prove superiority. Football is played with a weird shaped ball and far more conducive to injury.
But in MLB they play 162 games -- and they ALL PLAY EACH OTHER. That logic doesn't apply in college football because two thirds to three quarters of the games are played against their own conference, with typically only one against another power conference.
What you're saying is not 'literally' true even with inter-league play, but I'll grant your basic point here.
Let's say hypothetically Alabama, Ohio State, USC, Texas, and Florida State all go undefeated in the same year.
Care to tell me how many times FIVE teams were unbeaten in the final regular season poll?
It's happened ONCE in the modern time frame, 1979. It happened twice if you want to count Florida making it to the 2009 SECCG. I could point out this means you're proposing a potential solution to a nonexistent problem. But....let's concede it's POSSIBLE for that to happen. Very simply, you go by SOS. Not a difficult thing to do.
How can you arbitrarily select two of those teams to play for the "title" while the rest play for nothing? We never really know who's better. When teams don't play each other.
What you're saying here is why I favor the four-team playoff with no conference championship requirement. You're reasoning here is excellent and the point I've made against the BCS. I'd rather have one questionable team per year make the tournament (they'll get exposed if they're not the real deal) than have a team run the table but fall victim to "well, we didn't rate you high enough").
I was just using the most obvious example (the actual playoff) since you were talking 1 and 2.
USC wouldn't make an 8 team playoff. They're ranked 11 and didn't win their conference.
And yet you put Ohio State in here, who didn't win their conference......
If all the favored teams won this weekend and the setup was 5 conference champs, group of 5, and two at larges seeded by the committee the match-ups would be:
#1 Alabama vs. #8 Western Michigan
#2 Ohio State vs. #7 Oklahoma
#3 Clemson vs. #6 Wisconsin
#4 Washington vs. #5 Michigan
Just a little while ago you were complaining that the LSU-Alabama rematch was problematic. Yet you're proposing right here that Ohio State has to beat Oklahoma again. And year after year you'll wind up with this same problem.
But if you move the field to 8 it's virtually impossible for someone deserving a shot to be left out.
Can you please provide me with a list of all the teams ranked five through eight in the entire history of college football that anybody thought deserved a national championship shot?
Two teams - 1983 Miami and 1977 Notre Dame - jumped from five to one. That only happened because of bowl tie-ins that were set aside 25 years ago (save the Rose Bowl, who monkeyed with theirs a bit).
In fact, can you even name five teams ranked FOURTH that anyone argues was a number one team? We're talking 80 years here since 1936. That actually was more of a problem when college football was entirely regional. Now that teams schedule big games early that is not a problem.